Burnt Orange Report

Guns, Grays and Howard Dean

By Andrew Dobbs

So Howard Dean is reported in the AP as saying "I still want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks," and has an "A" rating from the NRA and John Kerry, Dick Gephardt and other elitists who have shown a solid track record of alienating Americans and costing the Democrats every important post in the federal government jump out to attack him. Could we really expect anything less?

Frankly, I line up for the most part with the NRA. I think that blustering about a so-called "gun show loophole" is just politicking, I think that the assault weapons ban isn't really necessary and certain aspects of it (the ban on magazines that hold more than 10 rounds for all guns) are just idiotic- 9 shots will kill you as easily as 11. I suppose growing up the son of a gun collector who works now as a professional firearms instructor and having shot guns of all shapes and sizes since I was about 2 or 3 years old makes me different from most liberals, but I will say that gun control is an issue of incredible importance to millions of Americans and that it likely cost us West Virginia, Ohio, Tennessee, Arkansas and enough states to make the difference in 2000. If we want to win in 2004 we can't be seen as the party of Coastal Liberal Elitists. Interestingly enough the only candidates with a decent position on the issue are both New Englanders- Howard Dean (Mr. Liberal Elite himself) and Joe Lieberman. Lieberman is too honest with the Democratic base (i.e. free trade is good, etc.) to win the nomination so Dean it is.

Furthermore, it shows how out of touch with rural Southern voters the establishment is that they say things like "I don't want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks... who disagree with us on bedrock Democratic values like civil rights" (Gephardt). To millions of Southerners the Stars and Bars do not represent hate for any group of people, but pride for the other aspects of Southern Heritage. The view that Southerners are by necessity racist and that racism is the defining characteristic of our region is one that is sorely mistaken and represents the kind of Yankee elitism that has cost the Democratic Party the South.

But the best response of all comes from the Governor himself:

In response to the criticism, Dean released a statement saying: "I want people with Confederate flags on their trucks to put down those flags and vote Democratic -- because the need for quality health care, jobs and a good education knows no racial boundaries.

"We have working white families in the South voting for tax cuts for the richest 1 percent while their children remain with no health care," Dean said. "The dividing of working people by race has been a cornerstone of Republican politics for the last three decades -- starting with Richard Nixon. ... The only way we're going to beat George Bush is if southern white working families and African-American working families come together under the Democratic tent, as they did under FDR."

The contempt held for people of the South by Washington elites and Northern Liberals is the root of our recent inability to get anywhere in this part of the country. Furthermore, gun control is an intellectually lazy and fundamentally anti-liberal stance: crime and violence are created by desperation, poverty, ignorance, not guns. Taking guns away from people won't stop violence- educating them, getting them good jobs and reviving our communities will. We need to move away from these ignorant, lazy viewpoints and open our party up to the South again and it seems that only Howard Dean, the most yankee of them all (with the exception of Kerry perhaps) is the only one talking that way.